reading syllabus for winter
my reading list for january & february: some rereads, a lot of new books, and a good mix of fiction and nonfiction.
I’m trying something new this year—I’m making a reading syllabus for myself. The reason for this is mainly because I want to finish reading all the books on my shelf, but I also like having a schedule that I can stick to—it gives my life structure (I am a chronic planner, if you can’t tell). After having a sort of nostalgic epiphany, I decided to model my reading list like a college syllabus this year, or at least give myself a few themes and a general sense of what I want to learn from books (fiction and nonfiction alike).
Obviously, in classic me fashion, I’m making a new syllabus each season, because if you’re not consuming media seasonally, what are you doing? Everything is so fun when you’re living according to season, I promise.
Anyway, here is the syllabus I made for myself for winter (January-February), with a bunch of stills from The Holdovers, which was my favorite movie of last year. Also, here are some article recommendations for you if you like literature! All of them feel wintry to me (but literature does in general).
WINTER SYLLABUS 2025
I have a love hate relationship with winter. I think I love the idea of it—the coldness outside only amplifying the coziness inside; how the world outside can become blanketed in sheets of white pillowy snow overnight; the amount of hot beverages I consume and the warmth I get from it; the calm peacefulness of a winter night before it begins to carry a crushing weight; clear blue wintry skies in the morning and its icy crispness that resets your entire day before it even starts; slow art-centered hobbies such as painting or knitting or reading suddenly becoming very apt for the season.
Winter does seem very fitting for my introvert, homebody self—I can hide and hermit away in the comfort of my own room and solitude, and I can pretend that it’s a nice seasonal flair. I sometimes do that in summer when the outside heat gets unbearably hot and humid and I find myself slapping my palms together to catch a mosquito every other second, but it feels counterproductive in the summer, staying inside. Winter, on the other hand, is designed for you to stay indoors and cozy.
But I do get intense winter blues, and all of these hypothetically great parts of winter often becomes clouded over with this melancholic fog I live in for most of the first two months of the year. I end up reading more books in January and February more than any other months of the year because I find that reading is often the best form of escapism, and thus self medication in extension. I always fill up the months with relatively short reads. The little black books from Penguin or their short modern classics (the small blue books) are so good for this.
This winter, I’m also reading four chapters a day of War and Peace on the side, which usually doesn’t take me any more than half an hour, so I do that at night before I sleep and then I read something else in the mornings or during the day when I have time between obligations. I usually read about two to three books a week (I am naturally a fast reader! I am not skimming!) which puts me at about an average of 10-12 books a month.
My themes and specific characteristics in books that I am searching for this month are: poetic prose, meditations on melancholic feelings, writing that emulates the feeling of snow enveloping the outside world, underrated 20th century modern classics, wintry streams of consciousness, gothic literature, diaristic memoirs.
Here are the books that I am planning on reading for the two months of 2025’s winter, divided by week. Some are rereads, or books I finished halfway that I want to return to. Feel free to follow along and discuss!